Melting, melting.. oh what a world, what a world

So, I was making some polenta (god, I just love polenta.  Talk about comfort food) and tomato sauce (from tomatoes grown in my yard by my dear husband) for my first post-fast meal tomorrow evening.  And I just had to laugh because I pulled out three pieces of ktichenware that all bore the markings of my husband.

See, my husband has been known to occasionally put plastic items too close to the grill or burner when he’s cooking.  Now, a lot of women would just be so happy that their husbands are cooking, they would not begrudge their husbands a few melted bowls.  I’m not a lot of women.  I will not begrudge, but I am going to laugh at it.

Most of the melted items have already been disposed of, but here a few that are still in my kitchen.  Enjoy!

my husband turned on the wrong burner

I think this was pushed up against a stock pot

tupperware is so expensive, but my husband has no problem melting the lids

another tupperware lid down

at least this is a relatively cheap rubbermaid lid

Fasting

I have to fast today for a medical procedure.

I have found that fasting makes me lightheaded and bitchy. My husband and children have noticed no change in my demeanor.

Bar Symon

I finally made it to Michael Symon’s new restaurant, Bar Symon last night.  I was really excited about going.

We got to the place at 7 and had an hour and a half wait.  The place was just packed.  Unfortunately, there really isn’t anywhere nice around to go kill time.  So my husband and I stood around with a beer while we waited.

The interior is upscale bar.  There’s a big cow skin rug by the hostess stand and mirrors with cow, pig, and sheep designs.  The place is well planned out as the tables are close together but it doesn’t feel crowded.  I love the stamped metal ceiling tiles.

There are many on tap beers but I chose the Original Sin Hard Cider (oh, I just went to Original Sin’s web site and saw that they have Pear Cider too! I must try it, I must try it.  I have to find out where to buy it!).  I like hard cider but usually I only find Strongbow.  I like Strongbow but the quality varies.  My husband doesn’t drink it, but always tastes mine, and even he says that Strongbow’s flavor runs from “apple to stale beer” depending on when you get it.  I don’t know if it’s a Strongbow quality issue or a problem with distribution/stuff being on the shelf too long.   Even when it tastes mostly like stale beer, I still like it enough to keep ordering it.

We started our meal with chips and blue cheese fondue.  Sounds amazing but wasn’t as good as it sounds.  The fresh chips were nice, fresh and lovely, but had no crispness to them.  And there was only a slight hint of blue cheese in the fondue.  The chips and fondue were good, but they could have been better.  And the chips needed some flavor.  I had a deep desire to sprinkle them with salt.

Next, we had grilled veal sausage.  The sausages are served on a wooden cutting board with two types of mustard and sourdough toasts and a small amount of pickled veg.   This, and the chips, were my husbands picks.  He loves sausage.  I can take it or leave it.  The sausage was very tender and lovely and very lightly seasoned.  The sourdough toasts were lovely.  But my favorite part was the pickled vegetables.  I know, I’m not putting down the rest of the food, I just really liked the pickled vegetables.  They’re kind of my thing.

We had to try the duck confit sliders.  We only got one.  It was amazing.  The meat was prepared perfectly; duck can be so greasy and gamey.  The fresh cilantro made me so happy.  I could have eaten a basket full of these.  The only thing I would change is the mayo.  The mayo was good, but the meat is so lovely that you don’t need it.

My husband ordered the fried chicken and I had grilled meatloaf and polenta.

The fried chicken came with fries and Symon ketchup.  Symon must mean cumin.  Cumin was also the seasoning of choice for the tomato sauce that accompanied the meatloaf.  I like cumin, but not every tomato needs to be seasoned with cumin.  I found it to be a pleasant surprise in the ketchup but a bit distracting in the meatloaf.

My meatloaf was nice. The plate had a coating of the cumin-seasoned tomato sauce and the meatloaf was topped with “banana pepper relish” which tasted suspiciously like the “pickles” that accompanied the sausage. As you can probably guess, I’m a fan of comfort food. As such, I have become a connoisseur of meatloaf. Claddaugh’s meatloaf was better. Unfortunately, the Claddaugh’s nearest me was closed during some rent dispute.

The high point of my meal was the polenta.  It came in a metal dish that resembled a miniature metal wash bucket.  The polenta was so good, I wanted to crawl into that dish.  I wish my polenta tasted like that.  My polenta is amazing.  This was even better.  I would go beck to Bar Symon strictly for that polenta.  I really, really appreciate comfort food.

Near the beginning of our meal, my husband noticed a particularly attractive beverage being consumed two tables down from us.  He told me he wished he knew what it was.  So, I got up and asked.  And the lady offered me a sip.  I was in the zone, so I accepted.  It was amazing.  It was St. Louis Framboise.   We ordered one for ourself.  It’s made by a Belgian company (who’s website is erally cool, you should check it out here). After that, we were very chatty with the table next to ours and the people at that table and the people at the table in the middle.  It made dinner so much fun.  We were talking about all the trendy local eateries.  Both the other two couples share my deep fondness for Melt.  The sharing wife told me that I must try Momocho as they have huge vats of guacamole.  I love guacamole.  We make it here about once a week.  Momocho was already on the list of places I must try.  Now it’s higher up that list.

Now, the past few years I’ve been pretty good about not ordering dessert, but the woman at the table next to us kept talking about saving room for it and I figured I’d at least glance at the dessert menu.  Oh my! There were some strange and lovely things on that menu.  One was guiness pretzel ice cream.  Another was an ice cream sandwich with banana bread and some other unexpected flavorings. They also had bread pudding, which I adore.  It was apple bacon bread pudding.  Now, I love all three of those things separately: Apple, bacon, and bread pudding; I’m sure that it was delightful (the man next to us ordered it, they brought it out, cracked the top of the dessert open and poured the cream in at the table! Very impressive presentation) however, I just couldn’t do it.  It seemed wrong to have bacon involved in the dessert after I ate so many meats already.

I picked the turtle sundae because I saw the little carafe’s of hot fudge.  My husband was shocked that I had ordered dessert and actually kind of protested.  It was delightful, the nuts were candied.  The fudge was hot.  It wasn’t anything super fancy, but it was very good.  My husband consumed most of it while I was chatting with the couple next to us.  So much for protesting dessert!

We brought a bunch of food home, most of which our kids devoured as soon as we walked into the house so, you know, Bar Symon gets their seal of approval also.

Pros:

• pleasant wait staff
• good ambience
• interesting menu, unusual ingredient combinations
• good presentation
• loads of beer choices, better than average number on tap
• polenta! and it’s amazing

Cons:

• long wait
• expensive
• some dishes are not up to par

Really, even if I hated everything else, I’d go back just for the polenta.  It’s that good.

WTF Was That?!?!?!

So, I’m sitting at a bar tonight with several people from work.  It’s this sports bar/restaurant.

And out of nowhere walk in this odd collection of guys with an odd assortment of musical (I use the term loosely) instruments.  A tuba (that has  a finish I’ve never seen before.  I think it’s called “sat in a shed for 30 years” glaze), an accordian, a cowbell, a washboard (no lie.  I wish this was not true), and that string on a broomstick thing (wtf is that? I have no idea what to call it).  These guys walk in and just start playing.

I’m convinced that they weren’t asked to be there.  They played for about a half an hour.  I just think no one was brave enough to kick them out.

I’m such an ass, after the first song, I started yelling “Free Bird”.  Ha! I told my boss that he needed to dance with me  (he was very worried that I might be serious).  I told my coworkers that I was going to ask them to autograph my boob.

Honestly though, I’ve only seen a band like that in a cartoon.  It was a truly horrifying experience.  I feel like we should have all been interviewed at the scene afterward.  I want to sit down with a police sketch artist.  They need to do something about these men.  They aurally assaulted me and my coworkers!  I insist on justice.

Leaves Leaves Leaves

I am so sick of leaves.  So many mountains of brown leaves.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I had leaves that changed some color other than brown.  Maybe the key is to plant a bunch of trees that have red leaves.  I wonder if I’d still be so cranky about having to rake those beautiful red leaves?

Well, looking at how blistered my hands are, I think that perhaps I still would be cranky having to rake red leaves.

Christmas Plans

Joke Christmas lists aside, I am serious about Christmas.  I really take getting the presents and the parties right. Christmas is a big deal.  We usually have 3 or 4 houses on Christmas Eve to visit just to fulfill our familial obligations (too many divorces and pissing contests make it impossible to just get everyone together at once).  Everyone wants to see us on Christmas Eve.  It’s so strange.  Stranger still is that we have nothing at all to do on Christmas Day.

So it’s become a tradition for me to make a huge Christmas dinner for my immediate family on Christmas Day.  It’s one of my favorite parts of Christmas, planning and making Christmas dinner.  I enjoy making at least one new dish each Christmas.  All of the dishes are made from scratch and generally are pretty time-consuming to make.  One year I made lobster bisque; I started with lobster tails (I should have started with live lobsters, but I just couldn’t bare the thought of having to kill them myself) and went through the entire 4 hours process of making the bisque.  I’ve made cornish hens, yorkshire puddings, turkeys (of course), ham with tangerine-honey ham glaze (squeezing all the tangerines for the glaze is messy), all sorts of special stuffing (where I made the bread myself, cut it up and let it go stale, and then made it into stuffing), many different rolls and breads, cheesecakes, bread pudding, real cranberry sauce (not that crap that comes out the same shape as the can), etc.

Many years ago, it may have been our first year in our current home, I decided that I just must have a goose for Christmas.  I’ve never eaten goose before, but it is an old traditional English Christmas food item.

Well, Christmas Day, I got up to put my goose in the oven and realized that I didn’t have a pan long enough to accomodate the goose.  I always relied on disposable aluminum pans (I know, not environmentally friendly at all.  I now have real cookware) for cooking large things like turkeys.  But these pans weren’t long enough.  Not a single store was open on Christmas Day so I couldn’t just pop into Walmart and pick up a pan. I was having a total melt down.  I so wanted dinner to be perfect and I didn’t have anything else in mind to make.

My husband is such a great sport.  He got all suited up, cleaned the snow off the grill and grilled a goose.  It was hilarious.  Everytime he lifted the grill lid, huge flames would shoot up in the air.  The goose was just that fatty.  He was standing on our back patio, in the snow with a pitcher of water to keep the flames in check.  It was so smokey.  And when he’d come back in the house all that smoke would come in with him.  Our house just reeked of smoke.

The goose ended up being really good, however,  I haven’t made another one since.   It just wouldn’t be the same.  But it is one of my favorite Christmas Day memories.  Me freaking out because I’d failed to plan properly, and my husband thinking clearly and then  suffering in the cold and smoke to save my day.

30 Days of Night

Ok, ok, I know I’m way late in this but I rarely watch movies.

So I’m two years late in critiquing this movie, but I’ll claim that I’m right on time because (according to internet movie database), a sequel is being filmed now.

I just watched this movie and I Am Legend last night (once again, I know, these are old movies, it takes me a while).  It was theme movie night, I guess.

So I really enjoyed both movies.  However, I have some issues with the major plot holes in 30 Days of Night.  I realize that these movies require the suspension of disbelief and that they aren’t trying for realism, but come on. So anyway, here are my problems with the movie, in no particular order:

1. cell phones – at the beginning of the movie, the sheriff (Josh Hartnett) and his partner find a pile of burned cell phones. it is one of the many ways that the vampires have attempted to cut off communications to the village.  however, after this, the sheriff and his estranged wife are shown using cell phones with each other.  they never remember to use them to call for help after they find that the land lines and computer access have been disabled.
2. cell phones part 2 – later, we find that a strange man has come into town and helped out the vampires by preparing conditions.  we are led to believe that he is responsible for the cell phone thefts.  however, no one in the town has seen him around while he managed to steal EVERYONE’s cell phone.  this guy was in town long enough to steal the cell phones from 152 people (500 and some are in the village before it’s sealed off for the 30 days without sun) but no one noticed him.
3. cell phones part 3 – wouldn’t people in an isolated village such as this have a few satellite phones lying around?
4. sealing up the town – just because there’s no sun for 30 days doesn’t mean that every form of outside contact would close down.  That’s just silly.  the airport shuts down for lack of sun? I’m pretty sure that planes have been flying in the dark for ages.  the closed town is an efficient explanation for the lack of outside help, but it doesn’t seem realistic to me.  everyone racing for the last flight out before the sun goes down is just silly.
5. subtitles – why do the vampires need subtitles?  that’s just silly.  but it does add a nice layer of cheese to this enjoyable mess. actually, I don’t have a problem with this.  this may be one of the best parts of the movie.
6. asthma – why does Josh Harnett have to have asthma?  how silly.  only after chopping the head off of a vampire does his asthma become a problem, but then he is able, after a brief lie down, to go running through the town without any access to an inhaler
7. child vampire – is it necessary to have one of the children become a vampire?  and why would she be wearing a sun dress?  surely she wasn’t wearing the sun dress when they attacked and turned her.  did she change afterwards?  and did I really need to see them hack off her head with an ax?
8. marital issues – the lame allusions to all the troubles in the marriage of the sheriff and his wife, and bizarro reasons for the wife to end up coming to town and then getting stuck in town were amateurish and lazy writing.  and the whole, they still love each other, it took this crisis for them to realize how they worked so well together was amateurish as well.
9. killing the dogs – real sled dogs, tied up or not, (barring the use of a gun) would have been really difficult to kill without sustaining some pretty serious injuries.  and yet, the stranger comes through, kills the dogs without problem and no one notices the stranger or the dogs’ wild barking.
10. the stranger – yeah, all scary movies need a mysterious stranger who, while initially being written off as only spouting foolishness, at one point becomes the sole source of knowledge in the crisis.
11. the stranger part two – why do the vampires need the stranger at all.  they are impervious to most things and the village is cut off by distance and snow.  even if communications weren’t cut off, the vampires should have no problem destroying everything and everyone before help could arrive.
12. the grinder – how does the mysterious stranger manage to get the town helicopter into the grinder without anyone noticing?
13. the grinder part two – why is the grinder left running constantly?  doesn’t it consume a lot of energy to have a giant, metal shredding grinder running at all times?  what do they need this grinder for anyway? and even after the town power is shut off the grinder is still running for 30 days.  that must be one hell of a power generator.
14. how the vampires decimate the majority of the population in the first couple of days but can’t manage to pick the rest of the people off before the end.  you’d think they would have burned as they went and far before the 30 days ended they could have had everyone rounded up and fed on them as they pleased.
15. the end – too much cheese, yes, yes, Josh Hartnett is wonderful, he can overcome everything even *******MAJOR SPOILER****** the vampiric need to feed.  He’s so wonderful that in his last moments he is quietly burned to a crisp by the sun in the arms of his wife.  Blah! I needed insulin afterwards.

But it still was a fun movie.  I suppose the sequel should involve the vampires regrouping and attempting to extract revenge on all of the survivors.  Let’s see, there was the sheriff’s wife, his brother, the little girl, and a couple of other people.  Yeah, that sounds like a movie. Hell, I’ll watch it.  Maybe not until two years after release, but I’ll still watch it.

Dear Animal Planet

Flipping through channels and landing on yours, I heard “….when animals push the boundaries past two heads to three.”

Lame.  Are you the equivalent of News of the World for the animal world? Where is your sense of pride?  No one is watching your channel anyway,  you don’t need to sink so low for two viewers.

Really, when the Discovery network was new, the channels (TLC, Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, etc) were like PBS on cable.  Intellectual, informative. The shows were things you could be proud to watch.  Now it’s sensationalistic schlock for mouthbreathers who want to feel smart.   You could shown monkey porn on a loop and have more intellectual credibility than by showing what I just saw.  Don’t pander to the lowest common denominator.  Aim higher.

Geez, I miss Steve Irwin.

All you have to do is keep your eyes open

Exhaust hood airflow rating

Always remember to include units!

Death Comes On Swift Wings

This morning I was behind a Toyota Corolla with vanity plates that were a variant spelling of Valkyrie.

So, death no longer comes on swift wings.  Now it drives a reliable Japanese compact.  I bet the American Autoworkers’ Union is pissed!